Panel-type doors consisting of a single generally-flat panel and appropriate framing hardware surrounding the panel have found a great deal of use as closet doors, cabinet doors and the like. The opening mechanism for such doors may be by means of hinges connecting one side of the door to one side of the doorway or may involve upper and/or lower tracks on which the door slides or rolls. Of these, the opening mechanism may involve a double-door in which one door slides to one side in front of or in back of another adjacent door, thereby opening a portion of the doorway. Alternatively, the doors of the double door may be connected by hinges which allow the doors to open by folding. This latter type is often referred to as a bi-fold door.
The framing hardware for such panel doors includes horizontal rails and vertical stiles for the ends and sides, respectively, of the panel. The rails and stiles of conventional panel-type doors each have a channel that receives the edges of the panel. The rails and stiles are connected at each corner by corner connectors positioned in back of the panel.
The stiles of such door panels need to have a good stiffness to minimize twisting or bending that could release the panel from the stile. Any force exerted on the stile in a direction away from the panel such as a force exerted on the stile for opening or closing a panel door may pull the stile away from the panel. This may result in the panel coming out of the corresponding channel in the stile or in the stile becoming bowed. This problem is accentuated by heavy panels such as glass or mirror panels because the forces acting on the framing hardware are greater.
A conventional solution to this problem has been to make the channel in the stile sufficiently deep to prevent the edge of the panel from slipping out of the channel. However, this creates a situation in which the face or front wall of the rails and stiles is very wide. For very large doors, the width of the faces of the rails and stiles does not significantly detract from the appearance of the door. But for small or narrow doors, the area of stile faces relative to the area of the door panel becomes increasingly significant and increasingly detracts from the appearance of the door. This is especially significant for glass panel doors or mirror panel doors.
For example, in a bi-fold door there may be four mirror panels in an opening four foot wide or even less. A conventional stile has a face about 7/8 inch wide. Thus, about seven inches of the width of the door is occupied by the faces of the stiles. There is a vertical band almost two inches wide between each mirror which becomes quite distracting and unattractive. What one sees is a mirror subdivided by three wide stripes of metal. The effect is even more exaggerated when the opening is narrower and the mirror panels are narrower.
There is a need for stiles and rails to grip the panels of such doors which would not only prevent the panel from slipping out of the channel but would also add stiffness and rigidity to the door, therefore alleviating the need for auxiliary door stiffners. There is a competing need, however, to reduce the face area of the stiles and rails, particularly the stiles, so that they do not unduly detract from the appearance of the door, especially smaller or narrower doors.